This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Clothes are supposed to make a man warm, not of course by warming him
themselves in the sense of adding their warmth to him, because each garment
by itself is cold, and for this reason very often persons who feel hot and
feverish keep changing from one set of clothes to another ; but the warmth
which a man gives off from his own person the clothing, closely applied to
the body, confines and enwraps, and does not allow it, when thus imprisoned
in the body, to be dissipated again. Now the same condition existing in
human affairs deceives most people, who think that, if they surround
themselves with vast houses, and get together a mass of slaves and money,
they shall live pleasantly.1 But a pleasant and happy life comes not from
external things, but, on the contrary, man draws on his own character as a
source 2 from which to add the element of pleasure and joy to the things
which surround him. Bright with a blazing fire a house looks far more
cheerful,3 and wealth is pleasanter, and repute and power more resplendent,
if with them goes the gladness which springs from the heart; and so too men
bear poverty, exile, and old age lightly and gently in proportion to the
serenity and mildness of their character.